No Need for Chains
by Katako-Chan
Summary: I broke something apart. I did it. It was my fault. IchiRuki.


**Author's Note:** This is my absolute first shot at Bleach fanfiction. –is frightened- Please enjoy :D.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Bleach. I don't even own any Bleach merchandise :(. Just play in the sandbox :D.

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**No Need for Chains**

by Katako-Chan

The tower was a gleaming white on the outside. On the very edges of Seireitei, when the sun hit just right, the sentry guards would say to each other it looked like a tower built of pearl, and not plain white stone.

A perfect tower of pearl, they say.

A perfect tower of pain.

The windows were mere slits, offering the slimmest ray of sunlight to its inmates, so they just might be left hanging with a sliver of hope. There was no need for chains, screws, torture mechanisms. Prisoners, left with only the smallest sample of hope cling on to it as their lifeline, and by their own means, are tortured.

They are tortured by fate, tortured by hope, tortured by the one small window that offers them a glimpse of freedom that has now escaped their grasps.

Forever.

This is no myth. This is no great legend that is whispered among the new recruits of the Gotei 13.

This is the truth.

This is truth, I know.

This is the truth because I am a living testimony to this tower's powers of unimaginable torture. I am a prisoner of this tower. I am prisoner of my hope.

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_"If you can stand, run away! You have to run!"_

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It doesn't end. It doesn't go away. It comes back. They are my hope, they are the ones I hear whispers carried about on the winds that manage to infiltrate my cell. I know he would have never listen to me. We argued, and that was just the way it was. He wouldn't listen to anyone telling him that you'd live a longer life, a normal life.

He still comes, risking everything, not even thinking, but instead, following his irrational human instinct that conveniently appears in times of distress. Not even bothering to find a safe way into Soul Society. He barged in, set of every distress alarm, was labeled as a ryoka. But even after going through what must have been a hundred hells, he goes on. Where a normal shinigami would have died fifty times over already, he goes on.

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_"Filthy human...how dare a filthy human seize Nii-sama's leg. Know your place, boy!"_

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I called him that. I said that to him. I bust apart part of him and part of myself. Nii-sama himself attacked him, and when I can run to his side, I tear down something inside, something deep and painful. I broke something apart. I did it. It was my fault.

And even so, he still breaks into Soul Society, fights everything standing in his path, is nearly impaled by Ichimaru-taicho's blade. He forces his way through legions of shinigami ready to hold their own against him, shinigami who have had centuries more of experience than he has. Shinigami who have shikai, even those who have bankai.

He's not shitting around either, like Eleventh Division. He doesn't shit around with anyone he fights, captain-level or otherwise. That's what the guards say. That's what I last heard, when I still got information.

There is no more information within these hard stone walls. What little I can see of the sky isn't enough to see what time of day it is, let alone what goes on beyond.

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_"Just try moving one step. Just trying coming after me. I...I...I will never forgive you!"_

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I told him, I told him, I screamed it in his face not to come after me. I said that I would never forgive him. He would be lowered, unforgivable, in my eyes. But no, no matter how I screamed, it wouldn't absorb into his dense self. It wouldn't seep into his dense, stupid, idiotic, half-wit, _lovable_ self. He wouldn't understand it, and he still came after me.

He has gone through, is going through, will go through one hundred hells...to save _me_. Me, who has called him filthy, worthless, entirely degraded him in the eyes of two figures of authority in Soul Society. Me, whose charges are entirely just and true. Me, who cannot let go of him.

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_"Eventually, you will die...so lay there and live as long as you will."_

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Lay there, please. Lay there, on whatever blood soaked walkway of Seireitei you lay on. Lay there, and live. Lay there, live, turn back. Lay there, live, turn back go home, and live for as long as you were meant to, Ichigo.

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**Ending Note: **Please review and tell me what you think :D. Your reviews keep me motivated! 


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